Nihilism and Meaning

Ken Taylor
This is Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

John Perry
…except your intelligence. I’m John Perry.

Ken Taylor
And I’m Ken Taylor. Today we’re recording the program in front of a live audience at the Marsh theatre, San Francisco’s breeding ground for new performance.

John Perry
Our Thinking originated at Philosophers Corner on the Stanford campus.

Ken Taylor
Welcome to Philosophy Talk. [applause] Our topic today is Nihilism and Meaning

John Perry
Nihilism, or nihilism, take your choice—nothing matters, so that doesn’t. Nihilism, of course is based on the Latin word for nothing, ‘nihil’. Nihilism is used for a lot of positions in philosophy, Ken: the position that there’s nothing at all, the position that we know nothing at all, that there are no moral principles at all, in virtually any other philosophical position that could be framed using the word nothing. But the most common use and what we’ll explore today is nihilism as a view that nothing we do, nothing we create. Nothing we love has any meaning or value whatsoever.

Ken Taylor
Wow. John, nihilism not only captures of philosophical point of view, but a certain mood, a certain anxiety and melancholy. Is this all there is? Is all of humanity just a paltry few years of events and an insignificant planet about which the universe is nothing at all? Does anything matter? For most people, it isn’t a problem posed by reading philosophy but but absorbing the modern point of view, modern life, the minuscule place in the world and humans have the sciences and philosophy have have taught us that humans have.

John Perry
Nihilism first came into the philosophical vocabulary a couple hundred years ago as an accusation. It didn’t start off with a philosopher saying, “I am an nihilist,” but with a philosopher saying to another philosopher, “you are a nihilist!”. Some philosophers felt that if what certain other philosophers said was true, then everything would be meaningless.

Ken Taylor
So that and that was supposed to function as a sort of reductio ad absurdum because, of course, there’s meaning but your view undercuts meaning. You know, a fellow named Friedrich Jacobi said that Conte in philosophy, my favorite philosopher, particularly as developed by Johann ficta, led to nihilism, the view that nothing mattered that’s because Victor’s philosophy didn’t rest on faith and revelation, but an unlimited conception of reason. He emphasized the self as the beginning of philosophy.

John Perry
Jacobi, the accuser, I think, put his finger on the fundamental dialectic of nihilism, most religions, many philosophies and the common beliefs of many people suppose that the source of value is something beyond something beyond humans, something beyond the physical world, something beyond the natural world, if not God, then some transcendent realm or maybe a realm of transcendent forms, like Plato thought, nihilism as an accusation is a challenge. If you don’t believe in God, or something else, transcendent and eternal. Why does anything matter?

Ken Taylor
You know, and then, but by the time we get to Nietzsche, another one of my favorite philosophers, we have a philosopher actually embracing nihilism in the way he says, God is dead, everything is permitted. And hurray for that.

John Perry
But there’s a little bit of ambiguity there can think of Jakob is painting point as an argument, first premise, all meaning and value must have a transcendent source. second premise. If you don’t have God, faith in Revelation, then there is no transcendent source. Conclusion, on your godless view, whether you admit it or not, there is no meaning. Now, I don’t really think Nietzsche accepted the conclusion that there was not any meaning.

Ken Taylor
Well, I see your point and I and it’s a good point he, he accepted that that wasn’t the kind of meaning that y’all could be wanted, but not that there was no meaning.

John Perry
No, I think Nietzsche would qualify the first premise some kinds of meaning and value need a transcendent source. So given the second premise, there is no transcendent source, you get a modified conclusion. There are no means and values of that kind. But I think Nietzsche really thought that there were no meanings and values in life was meaningless. It’s complicated.

Ken Taylor
I mean, once he clearly is on the list, there is no transcendent meaning to ground, the meaning that comes out of human projects and commitments. But in another sense, he’s not and although he’s a little confusing about it, human products and commitments are themselves just in themselves a valid sources of meaning.

John Perry
So maybe in these broad strokes, his Bird’s Eye way of looking at it saying are very eminent guest today is in spirit and Nietzschean, if I’m sure not in detail.

Ken Taylor
Well, that’s Hubert Dreyfus, professor emeritus at Berkeley, author of many influential books and co author of a forthcoming book that’s right on our topic. It’s called “A Life Worth Living: Luring Back the Gods in Our Secular Age.”

John Perry
He’ll join us in just a bit. And we’ll also want our live audience here at the marsh to join in the conversation too.

Ken Taylor
But first, our Roving Philosophical Reporter, April Dembosky, talks to someone who found nihilism at the root of a musical revolution. Se files this report.

April Dembosky
Punk music was a backlash against the hippie and disco generations. Young musicians in the late 70s were sick of the political messages and commercial images of bands like The Eagles and Journey. They started writing songs about hopelessness, despair, and no future.

Jack Boulware
It’s a catchy phrase. there’s a lot of young people could relate to that.

April Dembosky
Writer Jack Boulware has co-authored a book on the history of the punk scene in San Francisco. “Gimme Something Better” chronicles the early days when our students watched British punk bands insult newscasters on TV and follows the scene into the 80s, when things got really nihilistic.

Jack Boulware
It turned into this kind of slam-dancing mosh-pit kind of scene and people got bloodied at this show. Somebody got their nose broken. It was extremely violent. It’s just this huge outburst of adrenaline energy. Somebody screams for 11 seconds, you can’t understand any of the words and then it’s over.

April Dembosky
Younger and younger kids during the scene, especially runaways who left broken homes. But they found even less structure among other punks.

Speaker 5
There’s parties all night long, people are shooting you up with speed. You don’t know where you are, you’re awake for three days. I don’t think any of them really were consciously thinking. “I’m a nihilist and I’m 11 years old.” They were really just trying to survive.

April Dembosky
Things got even worse when the skinheads showed up.

Speaker 5
Nightclubs would have to be closed because the new skinheads would show up to the show, pick a bunch of fights. A lot of people would “sieg heil” in the audience

April Dembosky
But even in its most nihilistic manifestations, punk was still a movement. People gathered for concerts, they started magazines, they connected over the music.

Fans found meaning in the meaninglessness. Writer Eric Davis says this is common in counterculture movements.

Eric Davis
Individual nihilism could also coexist in meaningful activity, but it becomes harder to say what it means when it’s a way that people got together and bond and share and, you know, relate and communicate. Like, all those things are inherently meaning-making positions.

April Dembosky
Even violence and apathy take on new connotations.

Eric Davis
The nihilism of punk becomes in a way part of a performance, where the performance itself actually has a lot of meaning, culturally constructive meaning involved in it.

April Dembosky
Eventually punks launched a backlash against their own backlash. The search for meaning became outright. The Nazis moved on. Kids rejected drugs and became straight-edge. Author Jack Boulware says they organized and helped each other.

Speaker 5
People started organizing squatting projects, soup kitchens started working with punk kids, there was some organization around how young people can be part of the scene and not just get chewed up by the system.

April Dembosky
The 80s ended and by the 90s, the kids had to grow up. Many of them left their nihilistic teen years far in the past.

Speaker 5
A lot of people who can professors, lawyers, psychologists, youth counselors, drug counselors. For those people who lived through it, they wanted to make the place a better world and so that’s where they took their life.

April Dembosky
For Philosophy Talk, I’m April Dembosky.

John Perry
I’m John Perry along with Ken Taylor, and you’re listening to Philosophy Talk coming to you from the Marsh Theatre in San Francisco.

Ken Taylor
And we’re joined now by Hubert Dreyfus. He’s professor emeritus of philosophy for the UC Berkeley. He’s author of lots of cool stuff stuff about AL and Heidegger and all that, but he’s authored relevant to our current purposes of a forthcoming book co-authored with Sean Kelly, a book called “A Life Worth Living: Luring Back the Gods in Our Secular Age.” Hubert, welcome to Philosophy Talk.

Hubert Dreyfus
Thanks.

John Perry
Hubert, you’ve written about existentialism, AI, Heidegger and so much more. But how does your new book with its steam luring back the gods fit into your career?

Hubert Dreyfus
Well, it is sort of surprising even to me, I guess the unifying theme is interested in mastery and skills. Then once upon a time, that was a criticism of AI and expert systems, but masters also bring together people around them. And sometimes gods have just watching a program about this, in which which sums it up perfectly. For Miko, Master since this thing, and if he doesn’t very, very well, they will yell, Olay. But it turns out I just wet in the old days, they used to say Allah, But bit by bit, it got deformed, and what so when he’s winning, singer becomes transcendent, and just carried away beside himself and so forth. Then the people yell, God, in fact, that is something something transcendent, as you guys have been talking about shrines through him. And all I wanted to add is I don’t believe in anything really can’t transcend in any sort of metaphysical sense. But there is something that he doesn’t control, it controls him.

John Perry
So the topic of the show is nihilism, your new book is about nihilism, give us your definition of nihilism.

Hubert Dreyfus
Well, I don’t have a finished one. Nietzsche said it was when the top values lost their value. It’s that fact that there there are no more guidelines for making important decisions in your life. But I think it’s got two sides on it. That’s the sort of situation that there is no none of these guidelines, but then there’s their sort of reaction to it. And that’s, that’s the more interesting, so what do you what do you do in a situation like that.

Ken Taylor
Let’s slow down a little bit. You said there are no guidelines for making decisions in your life. Although the things I want the things I value. I mean, there may not be external authorities, although there are things that parade as external authorities. I mean, if there’s no God, okay, then there’s tradition. There’s history. There’s your community, there’s, there’s your parents, I mean, they all offer themselves as authorities over you for deciding how to live your life. What do you what should you do? What’s worth pursuing? What isn’t? What do you mean, when you say, there are no guidelines?

Hubert Dreyfus
That’s a good, good point. I think that the people who hear the parents that and then the usual tradition and so forth, don’t believe it anymore. By sub happy coincidence, I just have to have a Dylan song here, which does this better than I can say it and I’ll just read it darkness at noon, people make everything from toy guns, that spark and fresh colored cries that grow in the dark, it’s easy to see without looking too far, that nothing much is really sacred. I’ve got nothing more to live up to. There’s no sense in trying. It’s alright Ma, I’m only dying. That’s, that’s a really that’s a new Ristic reaction to all the things you list but they don’t work less.

Ken Taylor
So, okay, in times gone by. People thought that their lives should be shaped by some transcendent authority. And if you ask to God, why God you get my job, you get God saying, Where the hell were you when I created the universe? So you have no business asking me why so I’m an unquestionable authority. Why should the breakdown of that let’s say false pretend unquestioned authority, why should it go mountain I was in a white suit and we were wrong about the ultimate source of meaning and evaluating some transcendent God it is in history, it isn’t your parents. It’s something about your own will your own aspirations, your own projects, why not do that?

Hubert Dreyfus
Well, good and your your perfect, Nietzschean, they because what Nietzsche said was the passive nihilism is the bad guy that gives up because I was recruiting a passive Nicholas villain song and it’s in effect, nothing is worth doing. That’s it isn’t worth living, the old values are all gone. Nothing is sacred, but need that was what Nietzsche called passive nihilism. And then he said that active nihilism is one an opportunity, we can now give things any meaning that we please we can commit ourselves to anything we pleased. We, we don’t need any external authority.

John Perry
Well, that’s fine for Nietzsche, but he was writing before the 20th century. Now, now, we’ve gone through the 20th century and, you know, it was horrible, right? I mean, can we really we saw where this freedom leads, it leads to Nazism and fascism on the one hand, haven’t fallen on the other and in various things, the Vietnam War I mean, there must be some right and wrong to it that we could get back, don’t you think?

Hubert Dreyfus
Well, whether we can get back to it or not is really a question of whether we It grabs us or not, whether it has authority for us or not. And that situation is seems to be it doesn’t anymore. And that’s the problem. And Nietzsche is positive nihilism is part of the problem. And this is, I want to add something that if you say, if one, if one says, well, we let’s cut become what Nietzsche calls free spirits and give our lives and everything else, meaning, then it doesn’t have the old transcendent authority that’s gone. But it doesn’t have a new kind of authority either. Because once you give them meaning, it hasn’t any authority, you can just take it back.

Ken Taylor
Well, I want to challenge you on that on that point. But after after a break. This is a special edition of Philosophy Talk coming to you from the Marsh Theatre in San Francisco. We’re discussing nihilism and meaning with Hubert Dreyfus from UC Berkeley.

John Perry
We’ve been talking about what nihilism is and where it comes from. Next, we’re going to consider responses to it. What can be done when you’re overcome or inundated with feelings about the meaninglessness of it all?

Ken Taylor
Responses to nihilism—along with questions from our live audience, when Philosophy Talk continues.

John Perry
Welcome back to philosophy Talk. [applause] Are life and existence without God vacant and meaningless? Can we repair the gap by making up our own principles and trying to stick to them? Those are the questions. I’m John Perry.

Ken Taylor
And I’m Ken Taylor. We’re talking about nihilism, and meaning with Hubert Dreyfus from UC Berkeley.

John Perry
Do you ground the meaning of your own life and how God wants things to go, or in what projects you’ve committed yourself to, or in some combination thereof? If God is dead, or tired, or at some fatal wheezing disease, does it follow that everything is permitted? Join the discussion by stepping up to one of the microphones at either side of the stage and making your life meaningful again.

Ken Taylor
So I know that you have an answer to Neil, but I want to wallow in nihilism a little bit, and I want to actually challenge an entrance you made? Because you said well, if you make it up yourself, it has no authority. Okay, that’s like the kid who says, who discovers that mom and dad are just people like him, and that he can do what he chooses to do. He doesn’t have to mom and dad are not unquestioned authority. And then it’s like you think God, mom and dad are unquestioned authority? What am I to do? Well, the answer is, take control of your life, live your life, commit yourself the things we want. I don’t I don’t understand the logic that now there is no basis for living my life. Unless there’s something external to me, to which I must hand over my life. I just think that’s a fallacious inference.

Hubert Dreyfus
Okay. Suppose you say commit yourself to something. And then somebody says, why this, whatever it is, and that’s when Nietzsche says, quote, the why, but finds no answer. And so there you are, well, how can you take seriously, make sacrifices.

Ken Taylor
Because this is the life that I undertake. I hereby undertake this, I hereby undertook to be a philosophy, because it’s what I want it the things that I aspire to.

John Perry
But if I, if I say, Well, I decide I’m not going to be a Nazi. I’m not going to be a slaveholder. But you know, if you want to decide something different, it’s really completely symmetrical. Can we really live with it?

Ken Taylor
Well, we do. I mean, the world is there a Nazi there is slaveholders there are abolitionist ensure now here’s what’s true. My authority may not transmit to you. It may not transmit to anybody other than myself. But okay, so what?

John Perry
So you’re a nihilist.

Hubert Dreyfus
Why do that rather than anything else, there’s no authority in it, there’s no conviction and if tomorrow you could just wake up and do something differently.

Ken Taylor
Why is there no conviction?

Hubert Dreyfus
Well, that you because you could conviction will come and can change anytime. Try this. Sorry. Let’s try start kind of nihilism. So you’re free to give your life any meaning. Okay. His example is a gambler who gives his life the meaning he’s not gonna gamble anymore one evening, and he’s full of authority. He does his decision, and he’s got freewill and he does it. And then the next morning, he wakes up and he decides now he’s going to freely gamble that evening and nothing of the previous decision made any had any reason and therefore it has no grip on him, and therefore we can change it or You can just change all the time.

Ken Taylor
The nice thing about God or other content of authority is the nice comforting thing was that if you were ever tempted to live a different life, God would say, No, you don’t? And if you said to God, but why? What reason would God give you? I mean, was there more reason with God around? God would say, No, you don’t? Because I’m big and powerful, and you’re just a little.

John Perry
And where were you when I made the heavens and Earth?

Ken Taylor
Is that God’s answer?

Hubert Dreyfus
That would be one kind of answer. It would be better if there were some kind of answer that didn’t require that kind of authority that had some kind of authority. And that’s where we should be trying to look at things.

John Perry
There seems to be plenty of room between the view that we need transcendent God derived values, and the views that all we have is our own particular consciousness. There’s, there’s nature, there’s human life, there’s reason all of these things might be grounded on our own existence. But but have a little more objectivity than just I’ve decided this.

Ken Taylor
You’re listening to Philosophy Talk, coming to you live from the Mars theater, San Francisco’s breeding ground for new performance in front of a live audience, and we’d love to have questions on that live audience. Step up to the mic and either side of the of the theater and and we’ll get to you and we have a question here. Now, tell us who you are and tell us what your question is, welcome to Philosophy Talk.

Tom
Tom Merle. I was going to make the point that was just made, which is the authority may be grounded in us that is we have a certain kind of hardwiring referred to we have genetic predispositions, we have temperaments. And through evolution, or through the development of society, these tendencies then lead to, there are differences among individuals, they lead to social relations, they lead to the good life, considered broadly. So you don’t really need a grand puppeteer, you have nature developing its own dynamic, which then advances civilization by virtue of what works and what doesn’t.

Ken Taylor
So Hubert, what do you think?

Hubert Dreyfus
What counts as worked and not worked?

Tom
Well, what counts is what again, advances that that particular society, or the species or the race, or whatever it is that you want to continue. So through sexual selection, or there’s other kinds of dynamics built into the biology of species. That’s what setting the direction, not an external mandate.

Ken Taylor
But let’s go back to something John said in passing, because we’ve all lived through the 20th century, or some chunk of it. And the 20th century was the century of horrors, you know, worldwide economic collapse, so capitalism didn’t look like it was gonna work. Communism, and the gulag, Nazism and the Holocaust, you know, Pol, pot, apartheid. I mean, it’s a century it was a century of horrors. That was—

John Perry
Dallas Cowboys.

Ken Taylor
I would think that you couldn’t get from the dynamic of history, you know, in nature, an answer to your question, could you?

Hubert Dreyfus
Well, if you could, I think you’d be sort of like an animal, you, you’d be compelled, by the way things have evolved to have a certain bunch of values and act in a certain way. It doesn’t sound like you were doing anything, you’re just a product, the way the jeans are, have stopped. And that doesn’t seem like an answer to how you could lead a good life and maybe just how species to advance itself through you. If, if that’s enough to satisfy you, then that’s an answer to nihilism.

John Perry
I mean, there seems to be what what G E Moore on the open question argument here, you say, Well, look, this is right, this is gives heads authority, because this is this is what’s good for human being or this what’s good for my society. Well, yeah, but maybe your society is isn’t isn’t one that that ought to thrive? Well, but this is what’s good for human beings. Maybe even these were a colossal evolutionary mistake, and life on Earth would be better off without them. And we just say life on Earth is such a good thing anyway. So no matter what you choose, even if it gives you an internal logic, you can always ask this question, but why does that matter? It’s very disturbing.

Ken Taylor
Something that silences that question why? Like, let’s, we’ve got another question here. Welcome to Philosophy Talk, tell us your name and then your comment your question.

Rodrigo
My name is Rodrigo. And my question is less about nihilism itself as to how many of us are nihilistic. So, if nihilism is the, the absence of any ultimate values on so many of us, speak with the rhetoric of creating values for ourselves or assuming or committing ourselves to values, then how do we make sense of those who would play down their actual values as just talk or just preferences and yet, then wants to impose themselves on others by the advance of things like tolerance or democracy, or values that seemed to be universal when you get past the considerations of marrows? In other words, the question is, are we really nihilistic or not in modern America?

Hubert Dreyfus
Yeah, I can see the answer there. We have values. I think you’re saying like tolerance and democracy and so forth, which we accept and impose on others. That doesn’t seem very nihilistic. I guess all I could say about that is that reflective people, like Dylan, for instance, seem to not be satisfied with the fact that that we we unreflectively and dogmatically just take on values, they ought to be we ought to be able to defend them, they ought to be grounded. And that’s what you’re saying. We don’t need to do or we aren’t doing. I think the answer is we’re not asking the the why question. We’re not trying to ground why this way of action is better than some other way of just taking over what people think is the is the thing to do,

Ken Taylor
But uncritically imagine a abolitionist face with a slaveholder. And to have an argument you see want to be able to justify them, they have an argument about whether slaveholding is acceptable or not. And at some point, the argument runs out. And an abolitionist feels can feel entitled somehow, even though the argument has run out. But the abolitionists has satisfied herself or himself that he can coerce the other into ending slavery. That’s what the Civil War was partly about, or it became about right. What is that situation when we say, okay, we tried to argue with you, but we’re not going to listen. But the argument, there is nothing that will end the argument that we could go on forever, but we’re not going to go on forever. And I’m going to stop you from voting slaves.

Hubert Dreyfus
I don’t think that’s I don’t see that that the nihilists pass to have an answer to that, it seems to me, unless you’re saying that, because in order to make life worth living, you got to be free, and you can’t be free. If the other people aren’t free to kind of argument that people use, then at least you can start attacking it. But if they just say, well, that conversation is broken down, it’s time to get the army now because we’re going to get rid of you.

Ken Taylor
You said that in a nihilistic age, when we think there are no transcendent authorities, everything lacks conviction. But I think no, we can have conviction. I can, as the abolitionist have the conviction that slavery we will end and I will force you to end up.

John Perry
It seems to me that there’s a distinction that we need to make here, between what we might call psychological and philosophical nihilism. Psychological nihilism is the feeling that everything is meaningless, and having it completely sappy energy, don’t get out of bed in the morning. And I think there is a cure for psychological nihilism, least for most people, it’s the Get out, it’s to get out of bed, maybe with an alarm clock, not with a philosophical argument, but with an alarm clock, or a cat that sits on your head until you let it out, or a dog that pulls on your arm, or, in my case, all of the above, a wife that kicks you. And then get committed to something put yourself in a situation where something you care about will happen, you know, and the psychological nihilism of lift. If it doesn’t, then you better see a shrink and get some medicine, but there’s ways out of it. But the philosophical ideas, and that is, Can I really give an argument the way my grandparents could that this is the right way to go? Because God exists? And he said, so. That’s a different problem. So that’s my distinction. That’s a good one.

Ken Taylor
We’ve got more questions from our live audience. Welcome to Philosophy Talk.

Alan
Alan of Berkeley. Professor Dreyfus, could you read us your invitation or tell us the invitation to God, getting God back and luring the gods?

Hubert Dreyfus
Oh what I have in mind or what we have in mind. That phrase, by the way, is from Melville. And Moby Dick is all about these kinds of issues. And he talks about luring back the gods and seeing and now comes the interesting thing, what he means by the gods, he says he’s the Homeric gods. So now we have to think about what we’re gods in, say, the Odyssey. That’s when I started reading and teaching the Odyssey because I wanted to, I truly, we’re not gonna go back to those gods, those people like gods that come around and so forth. What what is there in that that we can use? Well, then Heidegger says, well, the Greek gods are really the attuning ones. And you might wonder, well, what does that mean? It was not telling you and the hangers not citing any text, which is very annoying. So so I decided I had to figure it out myself. And now this is going to take I couldn’t tell you what it would be like. Let’s look at the case of Helen and Paris and Helen runs off with Paris dance. In the Odyssey, there’s a dinner party in which they’re all important aristocrats and great heroes are there. And Helen’s telling the story of how she went Aphrodite shined on them. She just left her husband and her newborn child and ran off to Troy, and what’s going on? And what’s more, the audience isn’t shocked. They’re, they think that’s great. Homer says at the end of that chapter, Helen is peerless among women, what’s what’s going on there? Well, the god, Aphrodite, in this case, shines on them. That means they get attuned to what’s erotic in the situation, and only what’s erotic, not domestic, and children, and so forth and so forth. That and then this higher authority, in the sense that it guides them and tells them what to do, namely, Aphrodite takes over. So that’s the gods then are going to be among other things, the moods that can take over a person or take over a whole city or take over a whole culture, they’re not under your control, you can’t, we’ll we’ll choose them the way that we’ve been talking about things. And they will give your life meaning, as the Greeks knew for when Aries yelled and everybody was in an aggressive mood, and they would fight and kill each other.

Ken Taylor
So the gods for you are sort of external things that call you to do something to which you respond, not not projections out of you, not things that you invest with meaning, but they’re, they’re external things that call to you. And being attuned to them, as you put it, is somehow the source of meaningfulness. Because nothing internal could be

Hubert Dreyfus
what I think you don’t, they’re not things that call you and you can’t get attune to them. That’s to steal to Greek, I’m not going to embrace that. But that’s not too much metaphysical stuffing. But there are these forces, let’s call them that guide people and you can be receptive to those forces. And the highest good for those Homeric geeks turns out to be Helens way of being open and receptive to these forces, no matter why everybody thinks great.

John Perry
So just a quick question, I now have too much time. But would music be a good example because music seems to mean something that does call to us. It’s objective. We can’t help it’s feeling and people who are a little good at it can be very committed to it makes it life meaningful.

Hubert Dreyfus
It gives me it gives me to Homer example, but I think it’s a terrific example. That’s right, there are these forces to which you can be receptive. And the more receptive the better.

Ken Taylor
You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. We’re discussing nihilism and meeting with Hubert Dreyfus from UC Berkeley, co-author of the forthcoming book of “A Life Well Lived: Luring Back the Gods.”

John Perry
So how exactly do we cope with a universe that is missing God or gods? Next, we’ll consider how we can re-enchant the universe. Matter of fact, we’ve already started to consider that—how we can lure back the gods.

Ken Taylor
We’re coming to you from the Marsh theater, San Francisco’s breeding ground for new performance. We’ll take more nihilistic questions or meaningful questions from our live audience, when Philosophy Talk continues.

John Perry
Welcome back to the program. [applause] I’m John Perry, this is Philosophy Talk, the program that questions nothing and everything else.

Ken Taylor
Except your intelligence. I’m Ken Taylor. We’re discussing nihilism and meaning with Hubert Dreyfus from UC Berkeley. We’ve got lots of questions from our live audience. Welcome to Philosophy Talk.

Denise
Thank you. I’m Denise from San Francisco, it seems we’d be we seem to be creating quite a long narrative about nihilism, which to me would indicate that we’re authenticating ourselves. And therefore, nihilism seems to be defeated as an argument through that narrative. Authenticate means cating in terms of establishing meaning for ourselves.

Ken Taylor
By telling ourselves this nihilistic story about who we are where we sit, the very narrating of it is structuring and giving meaning to our lives. That’s pretty weird.

Hubert Dreyfus
I don’t see how a narrative saying that let’s take the extremists form There’s no meaning psychological or ontological. And therefore, that narrative there now has given us some direction.

John Perry
But suppose, you know, I come out of graduate school. I’m so offended by all these various people that are telling me why It was meaningful that I devote my life to showing they’re all wrong, there is no meaning Kant is wrong and Plato was wrong and my life has meaning!

Hubert Dreyfus
Then you got a cause, I see your point.

Ken Taylor
By undertaking to live as a nihilist, you’re undertaking to live.

John Perry
So nihilism’s kind of self-defeating in a sense.

Hubert Dreyfus
Why do it? The ‘why’ would come back.

Ken Taylor
We’ve got another question from the live audience.

Caitlin
My name is Caitlin from San Francisco. I know you’ve written a lot about computers, technology and the internet. And I’m part of a generation that’s grown up with the internet, and kind of this groundless quality that the internet has. How do you think the rise of the Internet has contributed to this new holistic quality today, if you do.

Hubert Dreyfus
Interesting question, because I wrote a book on the internet, in which I tried to deal with that. And I think it has contributed, because in the world of the internet there, there’s this sort of disembodied, non committed way of life. Let’s go. How many know about Second Life? It’s the best example of this. And it’s second lives this this world. On the internet, he does the virtual world, as it’s called, in the virtual world. commitments are totally unreal. I mean, if you don’t like what’s going on, and just what does it teleport to someplace else where you do like it? And your bodies don’t tell you anything? And you people don’t eat or drink or, or whether they have sex or not just as a weird question for Second Life, but whatever it is, it seems so it is disembodied, I really and it in so far, I guess, as people spend a lot of energy in Second Life, that certainly nihilism plus, as far as I can see, I wonder, but I tried it. I had a discussion section on Second Second Life, because my podcast got people interested from all over the world, who kept saying, wouldn’t it be nice if we could talk to you and talk to each other? So I said, Good, we’ll have a will have a virtual discussion section, it didn’t work very well.

John Perry
I don’t play Second Life but my avatar does.

Ken Taylor
I want to go back to I want to go back to luring back to God. I mean, in some sense, I understand your view. But I really want to probe it a little more deeply. Because I agree that a kind of responsiveness to let’s call it, the normative character of things, is good. I mean, so to be awed by something beautiful, but to be humbled by something overpowering, to be sympathetic to a person in need to feel like those things. Those things in some sense call to us. And I think, I think that’s an important dimension of human life. And learning to to see the world in these normatively laden terms. And I agree that if we take God out of the picture, and we take, you know, we are we think that like nature, the world is this stuff in motion, ultimately, and there’s no value at the bottom of the universe. It’s difficult how to, to build it back in. Right, but this prescription that was flowing back to God, that’s like, that’s mystical to me. I mean, the Homeric gods were, were fictions were figment, they were really just projections unto unto, unto a world that doesn’t have meaning and its own self of human meaning. We invested these things with me, but so I don’t understand.

John Perry
Let me interject myself. Ken’s question goes across the table to Hubert you’re, I mean, there’s, there’s, there’s, there’s kind of being really real, and there’s being fictions and there’s something else in between, which is being a steward personifications. And that’s what it seems to me, we’ve got these are real forces in our life that in fact, do give me the Christian monotheistic theology screwed it all up, and it all had to be packed in one container that didn’t work out very well, we might argue. But but they’re not fixing. They’re not quite real, but I mean, they’re personifications of real things. That’s how I read you.

Hubert Dreyfus
Good. And I sort of abide that the first half of what you said, You gave a good news story about receptivity to all sorts of things which make life meaningful. And those are the gods that the modern version of the gods like Aphrodite, and there’s still situations in which the erotic aspects are all it shows up to the people in them, that that’s a force that we have to reckon with and be grateful for. And that works. But then, well, why not just have that? Well, the there’s an enemy we should talk about the enemy is somebody coming along and saying, well, all you have to do is be autonomous. Don’t let these things in big words. was heteronomous Lee determined your life that is, don’t get dragged around by your desires and by your receptivity be in total control of your life. That’s what gets us into nihilism.

Ken Taylor
Well okay in a way, but you’re under I love cars I knew are laboring under the illusion, I would say in my content that these things that are in some sense really connected to your will. And you’re giving yourself a life plan and trying to share with others, that they’re somehow independent of you, and that you are only to bow to them, right as if not my will, but Thy will be done. Right. So you’re trying to project outward, what is really only rooted in your own will. And, okay, now, once I tell you that you’re, it’s an illusion. You’re the guy who says, Oh, my God, it’s really only up to me in the end.

Hubert Dreyfus
Well, it always was only up to you. But that’s the illusion, this will let you talk about that. trumps everything, and he’s really always you. You don’t give the erotic force to the situation, the situation draws it out of you. And Kant would say, Aha, and it’s then he found it. I was looking for workforce. It’s not exactly wicked, or sinful. But what is it to be heteronomously determined?

John Perry
It’s hard to spell.

Ken Taylor
We got more questions from our live audience. Welcome to Philosophy Talk.

Mary
Hi, my name is Mary. I’m from San Francisco. And with regard to Nisha and nihilism, I’m wondering, in what sense does Nietzsche His eternal recurrence, perhaps provide a ground for meaning?

Hubert Dreyfus
Whoo, good, Chris Rock, explain to people what that is that you’re talking about? So Nietzsche says that the world is the whole universe repeats itself. And he has an argument that since there’s a finite number of particles, an infinite amount of time, is that in his picture, everything is going to repeat itself over and over and over. And that’s the eternal return. And then he makes it into a kind of ethical principle, namely, you got to have the strength to will your life in every detail, to be repeated over and over to not let that become something that depresses you or drive you to suicide? Or makes you think, Well, I’d like to save the good parts. But there’s some awful, disgusting and depressing parts, and I don’t want them to be repeated over and over, you’ve got to be strong enough to face that? Well, I don’t know what to think you don’t think that’s the answer to nihilism. And, to me, it’s just too far fetched to really get a grip on.

Ken Taylor
No, but it’s a test of whether you’ve lived your life in a way that you can own it. Right? So here, here, okay, I’m going to offer you exactly this life. Right? If you rejected, that means you have, you have not lived it, you have not lived it in your life you’ve lived with as an alien thing. If you own this life in all its details, then you’ve lived this life. It’s your living. That’s a it’s sort of quasi-Kantian.

John Perry
Crazy. It’s a little ambiguity there. I mean, if I could live my life over again, as opposed to nothing, I suppose I live it over again, it’s had a lot of good moments. But if I had my trophy, living my life, just as it was over again, making some improvements, I would definitely make some improvement.

Ken Taylor
Well, again, that’s a test that you haven’t owned this life of yours.

John Perry
Bull! It’s not a test that I haven’t lived my life. It’s just a realization that certain decisions were mistaken.

Ken Taylor
So you don’t so your God, you say luring back the gods. In something you wrote, you said, it’s not so much that God had died, but we’ve turned our back on them. And they’re calling out to us plaintiff leader return. Tell me what you mean by that.

Hubert Dreyfus
You’ve given me the content. I mean, that’s the receptivity thing. We’ve turned our back on it by making it a saying autonomy that is all us making our life, our life plan, choosing our lives and all that is what it’s really about. Whereas all around, there’s all these wonderful things to be receptive to emotions, and music, your country, and that’s fine. I mean, that’s what I want to descend in learning that the gods that are waiting, all the way all the things that can give you meaning provided you will be receptive and not try to be autonomous.

Ken Taylor
Not try to be autonomous. On that note, I’m going to thank you for joining us. I don’t know if I’m doing that on my own will or responding with gratitude.

John Perry
It’s the right and meaningful thing to do.

Ken Taylor
Our guest has been Hubert Dreyfus, professor emeritus of the law Sophie from the UC Berkeley, co-author with Sean Kelly of “A Life Well Lived: Luring Back the Gods in a Secular Age.”

John Perry
And we also want to thank everyone in our live audience for participating in the program. Give yourselves a round of applause.

Ken Taylor
So John, what are your final penultimate thoughts?

John Perry
my final meaningful little poem for the occasion. God is great and God is good. He gives us values meaning and food. What he doesn’t do sadly is exist and that has left philosophers irked. But you can’t have everything.

Ken Taylor
This conversation continues—there’s always on our blog, the blog.philosophytalk.org, where our motto is Cogito ergo Blogo. I think therefore I blog. And we also we have a evergrowing Facebook page. So if you if you frequent Facebook, sign up and be a fan on our Facebook page,

John Perry
And you can download podcasts of our program from our website as well. For a final word, we’re going to turn to a man on the fast track to oblivion: Ian Shoales the Sixty-Second Philosopher.

Ian Shoales
Ian Shoales… Nihilism is the belief that values do not intrinsically exist, but are inventions. Friedrich Nietsche, often wrongly thought of the godfather of nihilism, wrote: “I praise, I do not reproach, nihilism’s arrival. I believe it is one of the greatest crises, a moment of the deepest self-reflection of humanity. Whether man recovers from it, whether he becomes master of this crisis, is a question of his strength…” Well gee, how did that whole nihilism thing turn out for us? We’ll get to that. But first, let’s backtrack to ancient Greece! There was no such thing as nothingness back then, no sir. Back in Aristotle’s day, it was all “nature abhors a vacuum.” Nothing could not possibly exist. It didn’t make any sense! Everything is something, and how can something contain nothing? Then, in the 17th Century, a fellow named Torricelli actually created a vacuum, and nothing officially became one more something. Eventually, in the twentieth century, the vacuum became a valuable tool, in creating lightbulbs, vacuum tubes, and various tools requiring suction. Unfortunately it’s been bad news lately for void lovers. For those who believe that if you stare into the void, the void also stares into you, you now have to add that if you stare at the void, it’s not really a void any more, because it now contains the radiation emitted by your eyes. Nothing’s perfect any more. Not even a vacuum. Thank you quantum physics! Thank you for nothing! By which I mean, of course, something. So nihilism has led to the trickle-down version of nihilism, which is that life is meaningless, therefore what the hell, let’s bust up the bar. Dada, surrealism, heavy metal, punk rock, the rise of Nazis, hippies, school killings — all have been laid at nihilism’s untidy door. But what about the resulting mixed metaphors? I have read that the moral vacuum vacated by ethics has been filled by pop culture, which, no longer infused by ethics or morality, gives us instead shows about nothing, like SEINFELD, or PULP FICTION. But I have read elsewhere that nihilism, in the modern sense, doesn’t come from nothing. That is, kids who kill don’t just pop out of a vacuum. So what is it? Does something come from nothing, or does nothing come from something? I dunno. I only know that you can’t get nothing from nothing. Well, you can, but what do you have, really? Once you look at it. I gotta go.

John Perry
Philosophy Talk is a presentation of Ben Manilla Productions and the trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University, copyright 2009.

Ken Taylor
Our executive producer is David Demarest. Special thanks to Kedar Lawrence.

John Perry
Thanks also to Dan Brandon, April Dembosky, Merle Kessler, Cassie McClanahan and Corey Goldman.

Ken Taylor
Our production coordinator is Devon Strolovitch. Daniel Elstein and Ben Hersh are our directors of research. Lael Weiss is our webmaster.

John Perry
Support for Philosophy Talk comes from the Stanford Humanities Center, various groups at Stanford University and the Friends of Philosophy Talk.

Ken Taylor
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John Perry
The views expressed (or mis-expressed) on this program do not necessarily represent the opinions of Stanford University or of our other funders.

Ken Taylor
The conversation continues on our website, philosophyyalk.org

John Perry
I’m John Perry.

Ken Taylor
And I’m Ken Taylor. Thank you for listening.

John Perry
Thank you for thinking.